—You’ve been avoiding me.
When I spoke it seemed to me that I did so without heart or spontaneity, the words ritual, a recitation of some previous speech. I helped the battered old crow to stand and he pressed his hands into his chest and stomach, feeling for damage. A rich meaty smell rose up off him, and I wondered if, like me, he had nowhere to sleep.
—Why did they do that?
—Broke my fucking ribs.
—You need to go to the ER?
—No, all I want is for you to get me to my front door.
So I was wrong. He had a place. We limped through some kind of tented encampment, two wretched figures clinging together as we stumbled through the wreckage. Homeless men sat outside shelters patched together from tarpaulin and cardboard. A fire was burning in a trash can. I wondered vaguely what had happened to the dog run, the primary-colored climbing frames and slides in the newly opened playground. When I’d last been in the park it was a cheerful, bustling place. Somehow I had never noticed how many of the buildings in that neighborhood were empty, burned out.
Secrets are told continuously at the edge of perception. Nothing ever goes away.
Even injured, JumpJim had a frantic walk, all knees and elbows. From time to time he threw his arms out in a sort of involuntary spasm. People gave us space on the sidewalk. We stopped at a graffiti-covered door, between a bodega and a Chinese takeout.
—OK, you can leave me here.
—I need to talk to you.
—Sorry, but you can see I’m hurt.
—It’ll only take a minute.
—I don’t know you, man.
—Yes you do. It’s about my friend.
—I don’t know you or your friend. Just be on your way. I need to get to my bed.
—Carter Wallace. You knew who he was, right? A Wallace. The Wallace Family. You knew how rich he was.
—Let go my arm.
—A minute of your time.
—Just be about your business. I said I don’t know you.
—I’m going to make you fucking talk to me. You saw him, or he came to see you. About—I don’t know how long ago. Recently.
—I didn’t see anyone. I make a point of it. I don’t get involved in other people’s business. Look, you’re a witness to what just happened to me. I was the victim of a vicious and unprovoked assault. You ought to show more concern. You’re hurting my arm.
—I swear I’ll break it.
—OK, OK. Hold up.
He looked infinitely old and weary.
—No need to push me around. You shouldn’t push people around. Sick people. You shouldn’t fucking do that, man.
Around me the buildings were in flux. The same buildings, not the same. Night had fallen and I was surrounded by a city made only of its cold places, all the basements and alleyways, the airless back rooms.
—You better come up.
—My friend Carter got attacked. He’s in a coma.
—I don’t know anything about that.
—Really? You don’t know anything at all? He was my best friend. You understand what I’m saying? My best friend.
—Just come inside the damn building. I’ll talk to you.
JumpJim pushed at the door, which had no lock. I almost tripped on a broken tile as I stepped inside and as I turned slightly to right myself, I caught a glimpse of the street, the window of a chic-looking patisserie, a woman walking a French bulldog, a scene so cosmically remote from where I was, the dark hallway, the smell of garbage and the closing door, that my mind found the two things impossible to reconcile.
The door closed. I picked my way up flights of stairs into a fetid red darkness, keeping one hand on the wall and listening to JumpJim’s asthmatic breathing. We groped our way around corners on unlit landings of uncertain size. On one floor I heard Fania salsa filtering under a door, on the next there was a smell of fish and the sound of an argument in what might have been German or Yiddish. The stairs seemed interminable, the plaster of the wall warm and slightly damp to the touch, like the hide of some amphibious beast. Though we were climbing up, I had the illogical sense that I was descending, so that when, at last, I heard him futzing with a key, it felt to me as if I had been swallowed by the city, and was somewhere down in its pulsing, volcanic belly.
He led me into a stifling apartment filled almost to the ceiling with books and papers. An orange sofa with cigarette burns on the arms, a sticky rug underfoot. Shelves were fitted on every wall, lining the vestibule. Those that weren’t overflowing with books, and the front few inches of those that were, had been filled with small objects arranged in ranks or groups: netsuke, tarot cards, wind-up toys, postcards of freeway rest areas. There were old keys and chopstick rests, painted eggs, swatches of fabric, each collection meticulously arranged, like letters in some high-level language. He had a gas ring, a great humming fridge, some kind of murky bathroom. He’d nailed scarves over the windows. The light was submarine. There was, as far as I could see, no bed. And no records.
It came to me that I too had been carrying a box of records. I had been carrying Carter’s box of records, careful not to slip. Where had I been taking them?
—I sold them all years ago, too dangerous.
He was talking to me. I must have asked him a question.
—Seventy-eights. I see you scanning the shelves. That’s what you’re looking for. I sold my whole collection. I did keep a few other things. For example, for example. Aha! You’ll find this interesting when it comes.
He took off his coat and began to rummage through a pile of books.
—Damn, where is it? You want tea. I can definitely offer you tea, while I’m hunting this out.
—But you told me you had a rare Willie Brown record.
—I lied. I don’t have any records. Not a one. Haven’t for years. So do you want tea or not?
—No.
I felt spent, as if I’d run some kind of strenuous race and now the only thing left was to come to terms with losing. I slumped down onto the sofa, which exhaled a barely perceptible breath of dust.